Going Home, Part 05, Greak Oaks

There was only one car by the curb this morning, and it wasn’t the one that kept getting the bomb. Well, he now knew it wasn’t the owner of the coffee shop, or the dressmaker who were the target. That still left ten other stores on this block. Maybe he needed to put a camera somewhere? He’d repaired a few, and they could function without any assistance. If he could find a place to hide one that had sight of the car he could review the footage once he was back in his room.

He’d have to see about buying one.

Breakfast with Natalie was nice. She’d smiled at his bag, and he’d explained it was a Tecker thing—he’d almost said Builder— he carried his tools in it and anything he might use to do repairs.

She pointed out the more interesting places as they walked. The Homage Theater, which had hosted plays and concerts until it closed a decade before. She named some of the famous people who had played, but Eric didn’t know any of them. She told him about the ‘Marmalade Gentry,’ a comedy about Tiranis’ nobility in the fourth century she’d seen there as a child.

When they reached the historic farmer’s market Eric felt like a boy again. It looked, smelled and sounded exactly as he’d remembered. Stalls sold fruits and vegetables, homemade products and a few that sounded like Builder creations, like the man, a human in his late sixties, who sold jars of a jelly that he claimed could help someone sleep just by leaving it open next to the bed, it could also fix respiratory problems, again just by breathing it and help one’s sex life.

Natalie had giggled at it.

Eric had tried to figure out how it could work, but it was an organic product, so not something he could understand, still, he couldn’t see how one product could do all that, not if it obeyed the laws of physics, well chemistry in this case. If it broke those laws, the item would only work for the Builder himself, and the man didn’t look to be crazy.

Whatever other questions he had vanished when Natalie placed her arm in his and rested her head on his shoulder. He hadn’t expected her to be attracted to him, after all, they’d only met the day before. He did know he wasn’t attracted to her. She was a nice enough woman, but she was human.

He’d found out he was attracted to furry women at a young age, looking through clothing catalogs, the lionesses, tigresses, cows, crocodiles and horses had been what drew his eyes. Pictures of human women had never caused the kind of tingle inside him a curvy skunk or lemur caused. He hadn’t understood back then, but as he’d grown up, he’d realized what it meant.

He had no idea how to tell her that. Back before his time in the army, he wouldn’t even consider mentioning it; it hadn’t been something accepted then. Oh sure, he knew of guys and galls in his units who had sex with furries, but that was war, you got your comfort where you could when all you had were the people around you.

While he worked out how to let her know, he followed his nose to a food stall with a sign that proclaimed it as ‘Authentic Hismeric Cuisine.’ It didn’t smell anything like what he remembered, not spicy enough, but he still bought two plates of Duriph and found a table for them.

“Natalie,” he began, deciding to go with something that wasn’t the real reason, but at least wasn’t a lie. “You seem like a nice woman, I don’t want to offend you, but I want to make sure you don’t think I’m leading you on.”

She blushed. “I’m coming on too strong, aren’t I?”

“I don’t—I don’t think so. I don’t know.” Eric found he didn’t know how to proceed. His experience with women who weren’t soldiers was limited to teachers, schoolmates, his sister and his mother, none of which had shown interest in him.

“I just got back from the army. I’m still trying to figure out where I fit in what feels like a different world. I don’t even know if I’m going to settle here.” He stopped, then shook his head. “That’s a lie. I know I’m not staying. This is a nice place, but it isn’t my home.”

She nodded, having regained her composure. “I guess I was just dreaming. You told me yesterday you’d be leaving. Dad said you were in the army, but that isn’t why I like you. You aren’t like any of the guys I know. You act older than you look, you talk…I don’t want to say old fashion, although that is how it sounds, you speak carefully, if that makes any sense.”

He’d noticed the language had changed in his absence, but he hadn’t paid attention to the details of how.

“I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable,” she said.

Eric smiled. “It isn’t that. I simply want to make sure I don’t give you a false impression of what is happening.”

“Or isn’t.” She smiled back and seemed okay.

Eric nodded and began eating. As he’d expected, the food was nothing like what he’d had while in Hismer.

“Don’t you like the food?” She asked between bites. She was clearly enjoying it.

“It isn’t what I was expecting.”

“Yeah, Hismer cooking takes some getting used to. Some people think they use too much sp—what?”

“Were you going to say spices?”

“Yes, it’s the biggest complaint about their food.”

Eric looked at his plate, then her. “This is considered spicy?”

“Sure.”

Eric chuckled, then laughed.

“What?”

“I’m sorry,” he managed once he’d calmed. “But if you think this is spicy, you’ve never tasted actual Hismeric cooking.”

“And you have?” She sounded dubious.

He nodded. “That’s about all I ate in my time there.”

Her eyes lit up. “You lived in Hismer? How was it?”

Her enthusiasm surprised him. “Yes, I was d—” he almost said ‘deployed there,’ but he had no idea if the war was still going on. Things had been quiet when he’d woken up, but he’d then hurried to leave the country and stayed away from any of the population centers. He’d stayed away from the news after that. Had hadn’t wanted any accidental reminders of his time in the army.

When he pulled himself back to the present, she was watching him silently. “I was there for a couple of years. It’s very different. The culture is nothing like here. Humans are almost second-class citizens.”

“Really? You don’t hear about that on the news.”

Eric ate while he thought. His information was out of date, Six-decade out of date. A lot could have changed in that time. He had to be careful not to give himself away.

Although… did it actually matter? Would anyone care that he’s somehow jumped sixty years ahead? He had to find a library and learn about this time, find out the social structure. For all he knew, Builders and Powered were subclasses now, or maybe they were the city rulers, instead of the old families.

“I didn’t mean to shut you down.”

He focused on Natalie. How long had he been lost in thoughts? He’d eaten half his plate, so some time.

“It isn’t that. You just made me realize that living as part of a culture doesn’t always match what others think of it. And it wasn’t all bad. For one thing, Hismerits throw the best parties I’ve ever been to. They’d line the streets with torches, music gets played from balconies, restaurants, corners. The streets become one giant dance floor, and no one cares who you are in that moment, so long as you have a drink in your hand and rhythm in your feet.”

He fell silent as he remembered one such party. It had been in a lull in the fighting, and his unit had been patrolling one of the city’s streets, looking for information, when the music had started. Soon enough everyone, including them, was dancing. No one cared they were soldiers, or armed.

He’d talked with a Jaguar there, with a long scar across his face. They’d laughed, although Eric hadn’t understood half the jokes the man had said. His grasp of the language was rather poor at the time. He never thought to ask for his name, but his new friend had introduced him to a couple of jaguaresses, his sisters, Eric thought, and he’d danced with them for hours.

When he finally made it back to camp, he could barely walk straight from everything he’d drunk, and he was surprised the next morning to find he hadn’t lost any of his equipment. His unit got screamed at for having mingled with the enemy, but Eric hadn’t cared. It had been the best night of his life.

Until three days later, when his convoy was attacked by locals and a jaguar shot him in the shoulder. Eric had shot back in reflex, and the man had gone down. It was only after the fighting stopped that he got to look at the body, saw that scar across the jaguar’s face, and thought of his sisters.

That night of dancing lost all its pleasure then.

He forced a smile. “If you have a chance, you should visit. Just be careful with the food. This isn’t going to prepare you for how they cook.”

Once they were done eating, Eric escorted her back to the shop. Her father lived above it, and as far as Eric knew, she was staying there during her visit.

He didn’t feel like going back to his room after that, so he headed north along the road. He hadn’t thought about that party in years. Five years from his point of view. Sixty-seven as far as the rest of the world was concerned. It had been when his time in the army had started becoming work. When he’d begun questioning the wisdom of enlisting.

The concept of time made him chuckle. He was, literally, an old man in a young man’s body, not that he felt it. As far as he was concerned, he was a twenty-five year old, in a twenty-five-year-old’s body. He might be out of sync with the world, but he wasn’t old.

When he finally paid attention to where he was, he was standing at the intersection of Dupres and Violet, which didn’t tell him anything of where he was. He could turn around and go back. He’d come across the shop eventually, or he could pull the out-of-date map and figure out where he was.

He looked up. The sun was high, around noon. It wasn’t like he needed to be back to his room anytime soon, or at all. He could just move on. He had his tools, what else did he need? What was he leaving behind? Other than three bricks of ExoClay? And eight hundred dollars.

The money he didn’t mind leaving behind, but the explosives were another story. They couldn’t explode by themselves. He’d made sure they were hidden away from anything that could generate an electrical spark, but if some unscrupulous person found them, they could do a lot of damage.

Still, he wasn’t in any hurry to get back. So he kept on walking.